The present disclosure relates to a waste toner collecting device which collects a waste toner including a toner removed by a cleaning device and a scattered toner, and an image forming apparatus including the waste toner collecting device.
In an electrophotographic type image forming apparatus, such as a copying machine, a printer and a facsimile, a powder developer is mainly used. A latent image formed on an image carrier such as a photosensitive drum is visualized into a toner image with the developer (a toner) supplied from a developing device. The toner image is transferred on a sheet directly or via an image carrier such as an intermediate transferring belt, and then fixed on the sheet. The toner remained on the image carrier after the transferring is removed by a cleaning device, conveyed to a waste toner collection container by a conveying member such as a conveying screw to be collected.
On the other hand, when the latent image is visualized into the toner image by the developing device, some of the toner may be scattered, leaked out from the developing device and contaminate an inside of the image forming apparatus. Thereby, the image forming apparatus is sometimes provided with a floating toner collection container. In such a floating toner collection container, air including the scattered toner in the developing device (hereinafter, called as a floating toner) is sucked by a suction device, the floating toner is separated from the air and then collected.
However, in many cases, the floating toner collection container is provided separately from the waste toner collection container in which the waste toner removed from the image carrier by the cleaning device is collected. Thereby, if each container is filled with the collected toner, it is necessary to replace the floating toner collection container and the waste toner collection container separately, and a replacement work may be performed frequently. In addition, it is necessary to secure space where the floating toner collection container and the waste toner collection container are disposed, and thus the image forming apparatus may become large in size.
To solve the above problems, a suction path through which the floating toner is sucked may be provided in the waste toner collection container. In this case, although a space saving of the image forming apparatus becomes possible, because the toner collected in the waste toner collection container is also sucked through the suction path, suction force of the floating toner is lowered, and the floating toner cannot be efficiently removed.